Debt support thread #2

[Nerfmother]

Here we are! Can't be bothered to think of an exciting title, sorry

lisa and others
here is an information resource about charity support available to families who are having financial difficulty
www.family-action.org.uk/section.aspx?id=21211
PLEASE use these resources
they are one of the ways that you can help your kids to never be in the straits you find yourselves in

I am the auditor for a couple of such charities so I see the (highly confidential) application forms
the grants are things like £300 to the child of a mum who had lost her job, so that she could still go on the course related field trip
another was £100 towards the cost of dance lessons after parental redundancy, as the kid had already done ten years of classes

it means that although you are tightening your belts, your kids do not lose their links and skills in the mean time

I'm 'treating myself' to window shopping on Amazon for my birthday wishlist. Okay, it might be 2 months away yet, but it's fun!

Did accidentally part with 99p for Kate Atkinson's Life After Life which was on Kindle offer though... Oops.

Nerf I'll tell you properly at the end of the month! However it was lovely to pop to the supernarkets this morning and only spend £21!
It did take me a while to come up with the meal plans to be honest but I am doing Slimming World so I based it all on menus from there. I am hoping it will help me to lose weight better too. I did the meal plans for the month and then a shopping list week by week for the fresh stuff I'd need. I will also buy milk, bread, cakes, yourts etc every week. The plan is to try and bake more as well as I spend a fortune on cakes for dh!

The plan is to try and bake more as well as I spend a fortune on cakes for dh!

I'm sure you know my other haunt is the 5:2 diet threads .....

TiP I know 5:2 would not be for me. I have real iddues with food and have zero willpower. SW is good for me because it enables me to still eat reasonable portions of the things I like and offers alternatives to other favourites. I could not do a diet where I have to practically eat nothing for 2 days.

Just checking

in so I don't lose you guys. (I hate this fecking phone)

Hi pixie .

aleC not sure baking more is economical. I let DD do scones today, and they were gone in about 10 minutes... She may need to make more tomorrow. I don't think this is going to end well .

Still awake and annoyed
Dh paid the bill, and then told me it came to 72 pounds, once back at home. Cannot see how three adult meals, one pudding and one starter, three soft drinks and a small coffee came to this; the online menu comes to £61.
The 3 dcs should have been free, and only had kids menu plus a drink (says one free drink).
Now wondering if kids eat free meant their drinks were charged?
So annoyed! Not sure if this is good (am super aware of money) or bad (spending dh's birthday evening moaning that he should have let me check the bill)

You're damned if you do, damned if you don't!

We stayed in with a ready meal from waitrose £8.49 (no DCs tonight). It was lovely.

I also made another fb sale - some unused cat food £4.

By staying in we've made £44. Yay!

So, end of the month. We have a brilliant £275 to throw at our credit cards (although not quite the £300 I was hoping).

Unfortunately, today we had to pay £230 to the vet (cat developed cystitis about 20 minutes after our vet shut so we had to take her to the out of hours which includes a £140 call out fee). Hopefully Pet Plan will cover this! Not a good way to start the month

Marking my place on the new thread

March has started with the need to look at an alternative vehicle. We cant fit 3 DCs in the back of the one wd have

bumbolina cats are pricey creatures. One of mine has renal failure and the food alone is £70 a month; meds are £25.

nerf this is the way it becomes - you are hyper aware of every spend. I'm literally in torment over whether to take them to the lego movie!

Have you checked your Pet Plan? We only got insurance after a pricey bite.

Yes, kinky, I am sooo cross especially as it was for charity so we also made a donation in lieu of paying for the kids meals. I just feel like we had to celebrate his birthday, we downscaled from original plans talked about months ago, and I've ended up really cross over a tenner. Not good.

Lego movie ok. Think it could wait til kids club though.

I might do some baking today...I made flapjacks yesterday.
Going to pils for dinner so no need to cook later.
Half term was very very spendy :( weather was awful so couldn't play outside. So ended up going to the cinema, cafe, ikea and buying DVDs to keep them occupied. Not much change from £100 :(
Dh was abroad with work so I sort of did whatever I needed to to keep sane!
March = Mother's Day and mils 70th b day and a friends 40th. Ugh. At least mothers day is the last day of the month! Friend will just get a card (we don't do gifts) dh is going halves with sil on a big gift.
Pancake day on Tuesday! Nice cheap tea :)

Can I pick your brains?
:)
Dh and I have £4k in an isa.
We have £6500 cc debt (on a 0% card)
We both use all our income each month...nothing left over.
We have to get our kitchen done. No choice - it's falling apart and the electrics are actually dangerous :(
We were hoping to keep the money in the isa for emergencies (not having an emergency fund is how we ended up with the cc debt in the first place!) and chip away at the cc debt whist keeping it on a 0% card. We are chipping away at it but only by £150/200 a month :(
Wwyd?
We have a quote from ikea but it's ££££
Our old builder has offered to get us a trade price kitchen and fit it for £1500 but it would mean borrowing the money.
Feel very low about it all.
We have only been in this house for 2 years and it's needed a new boiler, new conservatory roof, new kitchen appliances, new windows...:(

Morning all...so, car update! Looking at just under £500 for repairs, it's only valued at £300!! Have been to local car sales and left deposit of £200 on a Colt to pick up in Sat. It's £2600 in total so will use emergency fund and bank have agreed to temporary OD which I can repay in full from March bonus. Just means my goal to repay CC1 needs to move out to May.

On the upside...I'm getting £80 refund on car insurance and road tax is £49 cheaper per year. DP will take my current car, I get the Colt, and we'll see if any one is crazy enough to buy his car, sold as seen...

While it's not a fantastic result, another time another place I would probably have resorted to a stupid finance deal....but no more!

Badvoc, my old self would say borrow the money and keep the isa.
My new self says use the isa.

Badvoc - the offer you have been made for a kitchen fitted at £1500 sounds incredibly reasonable to me - so long as you believe that he will do a good job. Couldn't you use some if the ISA for that (I'm not sure how ISAs work)? Oh - and I think paying £150-200 a month off your credit cards sounds very respectable if it's 0%

Bumblina well done on the £280 on CCs.

I had a spendy evening last night as booked flights for me and DS to go to Dublin. It was part of my budget though. Going to Aldi today and hoping that I can get the shop in for £60. We already have fish in the freezer and various store cupboard essentials like pasta. Don't need much in the way of cleaning products.

Have a good Sunday everyone :)

It is a good offer. He did a lot of work for me on my old house and he does a good job.
Nerf...I know what you mean. But the thought of no emergency fund makes me panic. Maybe we should use some and leave £1k?
MGN...really!? Gosh, I thought it was a really small amount! :) glad it seems ok.
We are very lucky this year as my pils and mum are taking us on hols but of course we still need spending money, the kids need new clothes (I swear ds1 is growing an inch a day ATM!) I have had some lovely things from e bay for them though.

But at what point do you say it's an emergency?
If you use the Isa you just have to pay some money back to the Isa.
If you take on a loan, you then have the cc and the loan payments.

Mum2fergus - how do you feel about the car? Better?

Still smarting from last night.

Today is a NSD. Homework and stuff.

Am going to look at the bank tomorrow and see what we can pay off dh' card.

aleC4 I couldn't do 5:2 either - no willpower for the low food days! I can basically only lose weight by exercising, I love my food too much to diet. Luckily I build muscle v quickly so can lose weight just through exercise, and the school run (5 days a week from end of May when the nanny stops!) will be 1.7 miles 4 times a day .

kinky I go through phases of baking lots (have just started again) and I find for the first couple of sessions everything gets scoffed, then the family gets used to having freshly baked stuff round and it's ok.

nerf how annoying! Can you pinch the receipt from his wallet and phone on the sly to double check?

Bumbolina I hope your cat is better quickly, what a pain . You can't skimp on poorly pets though, can you?

Winter we can't fit three in ours either, but have decided to keep the car and put one car seat in the front for times when there is only one of us, and just use public transport/car hire for any trips when we all go somewhere. We need an efficient car for DH's commute, and just can't afford a big one that is fuel efficient, so this works out cheaper.

Badvoc use the ISA, it's what it's there for (to stop you spending on the CC). Maybe carve off a bit of the 0% repayment (even a tenner a month or so for now) into putting it back.

Wedding last night cheaper than expected as drinks were only £2 for wine/beer and free soft drinks (no drinking for me at 35 weeks pg) so we only spent £8. Babysitting was still £££ at £62, but we knew that.

Roast chicken, bread baking and snack baking today while the oven is on. Will be saving chicken leftovers (we are not big meat eaters, chicken will do 2-3 meals plus stock for four of us) for pancake day.

Can I join please?

I have 25K of debt. I have debt due to mental health issues that lead me to just spend and spend and spend. I had self-esteem issues caused by neglect from a step-parent so kept buying as I though it meant I was worth something and the complete opposite from how she made me feel. I also had issues with loss, so when I bought something, I bought two or three 'just in case' something happened to one of them. I have mostly recovered from the mental health issues but have got into the pattern of spending.

Over the last couple of months I've put loads of the 'multiples' on ebay - I didn't make anywhere near what I'd spent as things seem to barely go for anything these days and once you've paid the fees it is hardly worth it. But at least it was something.

In the past I've made multiple attempts at re-consolidating which have all failed as I'd maybe do a loan and a credit card, but not the other credit card, which was hopeless. I've recently re-consolidated again but this time have included everything. In the past, I always went to the top of what I could afford, but then something would go wrong with my car or something and I'd be screwed as I had nothing spare and it would end up on the credit card. I have made sure I have some spare this time that will be saved to deal with emergencies (once it builds up I can always make a lump payment).

My biggest challenge now is to stop the spending. It is a behaviour I have learned, I just need to un-learn it now. I try to ask myself several questions such as do I really need it. The only thing I really buy are clothes - I have no more room in my wardrobe! I saw something I really liked the other day but didn't buy it because I already had loads 'in reserve' at home. Was pleased with myself, and also started to realise that it would actually be nice to be able to have new season stuff occasionally, rather than working through the old stash of clothes - I hope this thought will help me to move on from buying things I don't need right now!

Thanks for listening to my ramblings!